All of the holiday Campaigns We Love this year

Holiday campaigns are their own special undertaking, requiring brands to think through what about the season is important to their audience and still relevant to their voice, values and more. A lot of brands play it safe and stick to family values and schmaltz, which is fine but not particularly memorable. We’ve tried to pick out the brands who tapped into something special about themselves, their audience and customers, or who went a little offbeat with their holiday campaign choices.

Did we miss a good one in this final Campaigns We Love of the year? Let us know about it on Twitter @UnionMetrics.

Sephora celebrates diversity by highlighting their own employees

Sephora employees are already known as “cast members” so it was a natural fit for the company to tap into their own talent pool in casting their diverse holiday campaign.

A move like this takes employee advocacy and reinforcing brand values to another level. As Deborah Yeh, the senior vice president of marketing and brand at Sephora, put it, the move was to put the company’s money where its mouth is.

Old Spice ramps up their brand voice for the holidays

Terry Crews as an anthropomorphized screaming yule log fits perfectly with Old Spice’s general branding and brand voice, and it definitely brought a change of pace to any standard holiday marketing someone might have seen just prior.

Poo-Pourri embraces the uncomfortable aspects of the holiday season

Some aspects of the holidays spent with family can be uncomfortable. When you’re a toilet spray product, you know uncomfortable well. Poo-Pourri tends to embrace this full-tilt in their advertising, and their holiday campaign was no exception.

This year they also smartly joined forces with a well-matched influencer in the form of comedian JP Sears.